Movies: Past, present and future

Zach Galifianakis: A literary lion reborn?

Zach Galifianakis had never really considered whether or not he bears any resemblance to American literary titan Ernest Hemingway.

“To Mariel Hemingway, maybe,” Gaifianakis said in an interview last week. “Not the other one.”

That changed, though, when Times photographer Jay L. Clendenin asked the actor-comedian –- who appears in the road-comedy “Due Date,” which hits theaters Friday -- to don a roll-neck sweater and pose in homage to Yousuf Karsh’s 1957 gelatin silver print photograph of “Papa” that hangs in New York’s Museum of Metropolitan Museum of Art. When that happened, the similarities were just too striking.

In a profile in Thursday’s Calendar section, Galifianakis discusses his role as comic foil/muse to writer-director Todd Phillips (“Due Date,” “The Hangover”) and addresses his reported role in nixing Mel Gibson’s cameo in “The Hangover 2.” And with the photo above, of course, channels Ernest Hemingway.